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‌CHAPTER 18

18 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, prakasho means light – divine light. And remember that darkness is accidental – light is our nature. We are surrounded by darkness but we are not it: we are its observers. And the moment one goes in one comes across great darkness. Every seeker into one’s self finds great darkness. But remember you are not it – you are the one who is seeing it. And because you are seeing it, you cannot be it. The seer is always separate from the seen.

So don’t be worried about the darkness that one sees inside. Go on remembering that you are the witness to it, and that very remembrance becomes light. Then amidst great darkness there burns a flame of awareness. It is a smokeless flame and it needs no fuel, so it cannot be put out: it is eternal.

To know this light is to know god. God is not a person somewhere but the light within.

Deva means divine, nada means music. There is a music which is uncreated, which is just there as an undercurrent in our being; it is the music of inner harmony. There is also a music in the outer sphere – the harmony of the stars, the planets; the whole existence is like an orchestra. Except for man nothing is out of tune; everything is in tremendous harmony. That’s why trees have so much grace, and the animals and the birds. Only man has become ugly, and the reason why man has become ugly is that he has tried to improve upon himself; he has tried to become something.

The moment the desire to become arises, one becomes ugly, falls out of tune, because existence knows only being; becoming is a fever in the mind. Existence simply is – it has no desire to be something else, somewhere else. It is utterly content herenow. Only man has desires to become. Man is never contented. That discontent creates ugliness because he is completely full of complaints, only complaints and nothing else. He wants this, he wants that and he is never fulfilled;

even if he gets then he wants more. The ‘more’ persists – the mind goes on asking for more and more. Becoming is the disease of man.

The moment one drops becoming one is a sannyasin. That is the whole art of becoming a sannyasin: just to be herenow, utterly fulfilled, contented with whatsoever is, grateful for all that has been given, not asking for more – rather, full of gratitude because so much has already been given and we are not worthy of it, we have not earned it. It has been a sheer gift from the whole to the part, from the universe to us. It is a sheer gift, just out of love. We had not asked for it, we had not earned it. Just to be alive is more than one can ask for.

And then suddenly a music is heard. That music is god. And when that music starts overpouring, starts flowing all over you and slowly slowly starts flowing beyond you to other people, it becomes a sharing. That is the grace of the Buddhas. They are full of inner music, harmony, and the harmony goes on overflowing; it reaches – to other people also. Whosoever is receptive it will reach and it will transform him.

The word ‘nada’ is also beautiful because in many European languages it means nothing – in Spanish particularly. That too is a beautiful meaning of it, because the music I am talking about is the music of nothingness, it is the music of silence. It is a soundless sound, what Zen people call ‘one hand clapping’... creating no sound, but still the music is heard. The mystics have called it unstruck music.

When you create music on a guitar it is struck music. There is a duality – the guitar and you, and there is a clash between you and the guitar: the music is created out of the friction. Hence howsoever musical it is and howsoever beautiful, something ugly remains in it because it is out of friction. There is a conflict between the hand of the musician and the strings of the instrument; there is a subtle war.

But fortunately there is a music which is unstruck, which is not out of the conflict of two but just an overflowing of an orgasmic union with existence. So both the meanings are beautiful – remember both: the music of nothingness.

Deva means divine, rupen means beauty – divine beauty. Truth is a very dry word, desert-like. To search for truth is an intellectual endeavour; it remains somehow logical, part of thinking. The very word ‘truth’ reminds one of thinking, of logic, of philosophy. God is far better represented by the word ‘beauty’, because with beauty you cannot associate logic, with beauty you cannot associate thinking. Philosophy has nothing to do with beauty. Beauty is not a thing of the mind at all – it is something of the heart, it has something to do with the feeling.

Thinking is a vicious circle: one goes on moving in the same rut. Thinking never brings one to the truth – only feeling does, because when we feel we are really in it. When we think, we are outsiders. Thinking is speculation – standing by the side of the road uninvolved, a watcher but not a participant. And truth can be known only by participation, by commitment, by getting into it deeply, profoundly, by risking – not just by standing by the side aloof, detached.…

If you remain detached and aloof all that you will ever know will be facts but never truth. That’s why science comes only to know facts but never truth; truth is something totally different. Truth is not a

fact. Truth contains all the facts of existence. It is not a fact; it is the totality of the facts. It is neither a nor b nor c. It is the whole alphabet and more. It is not even the sum total of all the parts but something more than the sum total, something plus, and that plus can only be felt.

Hence religion is based on trust and not logic. Religion is based on the heart and not the head. Religion moves through love, not syllogism. Religion is basically a love affair, and a love affair is possible only if the existence is full of beauty. It is!

Let sannyas become a love affair with the beauty that is everywhere, in all the directions, spread all over. The whole existence is permeated with beauty. To find that beauty is to find god.

So your meditations have to be focused on beauty. Watching a rose flower opening in the early morning is watching god! A white cloud moving in the sky, floating in utter let-go, just watching it, just seeing the beauty, the freedom of it, the sheer grandeur of it, is again opening a window to god. One need not go to the churches and the temples; the whole existence is his church, his temple – pray there, and let your love be your prayer. And wherever you find beauty, worship it, feel thrilled by it. Dance around a rose flower... sing when the moon is full, and you will be surprised: god is so close by, just by the corner.

Deva means divine, veero means courage – divine courage. People are living out of fear, hence their life is not very alive. Fear cripples and paralyses. It cuts your roots. It does not allow you to attain to your full height, to your full being. It keeps people pygmies, spiritual pygmies. To grow to your destiny needs great courage, it needs fearlessness, and fearlessness is the most religious quality.

People who are full of fear cannot move beyond the known. The known gives a kind of comfort, security, safety because it is known. One is perfectly aware. One knows how to deal with it. One can remain almost asleep and go on dealing with it – there is no need to be awake; that’s the convenience with the known.

The moment you cross the boundary of the known fear arises, because now you will be ignorant, now you will not know what to do, what not to do. Now you will not be so sure of yourself, now mistakes can be committed; you can go astray. That is the fear that keeps people tethered to the known, and once a person is tethered to the known he is dead.

Life can only be lived dangerously – there is no other way to live it. It is only through danger that life attains to maturity, growth. One needs to be an adventurer, always ready to risk the known for the unknown. That’s what sannyas is all about. But once one has tasted the joys of freedom and fearlessness, one never repents because then one knows what it means to live at the optimum. Then one knows what it means to burn your life’s torch from both ends together. And even a single moment of that intensity is more gratifying than the whole eternity of mediocre living.

Deva means divine, prabhat means morning – a divine morning. Sannyas can be the end of the night and the beginning of the day. Between the night and the day there is not much distance – a single step is enough to take one out of all darkness and into total light. But that one step needs real guts, because in that one step you have to die as you are; only then can you be born anew, only then can the morning be born.

That’s what Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus, ‘Unless you are born again you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of god.’ And Nicodemus was not a bad man, not at all – just the contrary. He was one of the most noble men alive – very good, virtuous, religious, respectable; he was a professor, an academician... learned. Jesus seems to be hard on him. He says ‘Unless you are born again...’ He was not talking to a sinner – he was talking to a really good man, but even the good man continues to remain rooted in the ego, in fact more so than the sinner, because a sinner has nothing much to brag about with his ego. The virtuous man is more egoistic. His ego is subtle, more refined, but then more poisonous too.

He was fulfilling all that was demanded by the religion – he was a regular visitor to the synagogue, he knew the scriptures by heart, he had tried to live a good life, he had created a character around him. But Jesus said ‘Unless you die, unless you are reborn, you will not enter into my kingdom’ – that one step: the ego has to be dropped.

And the moment you drop the ego, suddenly the night is no more, and everywhere there is light. Then one comes to realise that there has never been darkness – only our eyes were covered by the curtain of the ego. The light has always been there, god is light – there is no darkness; it is only that we are blind or blindfolded.

Let sannyas become that step. Put your ego aside and start living a totally egoless life. In the beginning it is difficult because you don’t know how to live it. You have to start learning from ABC, but once you have learned a few steps of the new life, the old life seems to be so stupid that one cannot believe how one has lived it so long. It is so ridiculous... it makes no sense then. Once you have known the light that existence is, then the whole of one’s past life only appears to be a nightmare.

Sannyas can become a beginning – it depends on you. Remember it: the ego has to be dropped, and it can be dropped because it is nothing but misery, nothing but chains. The ego is your imprisonment. It is not something to be cherished, not something that one has to cling to; it is the root cause of all hell.

So when one drops the ego one is not dropping anything – just dropping a stupid way of life. Then there arises intelligence, and that very intelligence creates a new life. To live intelligently is to be a sannyasin; to live alert, aware, conscious, is to be a sannyasin.

Deva means divine, arpito means surrender – divine surrender. The real way to live life in its totality is to be constantly in a let-go: No effort is needed, no striving is needed, no strain is needed. But we go on striving and because of that very striving we go on missing. And it becomes a great dilemma, because the more we miss, the more the mind says ‘Try harder – you are not trying hard enough, that’s why you are missing.’ So we try harder, we strive more, and the more we strive, the more tense we become and less is the possibility.

Life is available – it has not to be earned; it is already showering. Bliss is the very nature of existence. It is not a goal – it is already the case, but because we have made a goal out of it and we are chasing after the goal, we go on missing that which is.

The real seeker simply stops; he stops running. There is nowhere to go – all is here! There is no other time – all is now! And then there arises a totally different style of life. It is not of inactivity –

there is great action in it, but that action is pure of motivation. That action is pure of any goal; it knows no goal. It is out of this moment. It is spontaneous: it happens. It is not that you do it. It is like flowers blooming, birds singing, rivers flowing, clouds floating... like that.

Each moment will be full of action but the action will not have any doer behind it. Doing will be there but the doer will be gone, and when the doer is gone, life is joy, sheer joy. And each moment is so precious then that one cannot think that it can be more blissful in any way; one cannot dream beyond it. Each moment then has a radiance, a transcendence. That is the meaning of ‘arpito’: to live a life of surrender, trust, let-go, to live a life of no striving. That is the whole secret of tao.

Lao Tzu has said ‘Seek and you will miss. Do not seek and find.’ Now this is one of the most significant statements ever made: ‘Seek and you will miss.’ In the very seeking you have missed. In the very seeking you have taken a wrong standpoint. In the very seeking you have accepted one thing – that you don’t have it. That is where the fault lies. You have it, you already have it. The moment you start searching for it you will become neurotic, because you cannot find it – there is nowhere to find it; it is already there.

It is like a man who is searching for his glasses. He has glasses already on his eyes, on his nose, and he is looking through those glasses and searching! Now he will never find them. There is no possibility now, all doors are closed... unless he remembers that all search is futile, unless he remembers ‘If I can see then my glasses must be already there in front of my eyes, otherwise how can I see?’

In our very seeing the truth is hidden. In our very search the treasure is hidden. The seeker is the sought – that is the problem, the only problem, that man has been trying to solve and about which he has been getting more and more puzzled.

The sanest attitude is that of Lao Tzu. He says ‘Stop searching and be... just be... and you will be surprised: you will find it! By not seeking, by not searching, it is found. It is a still small voice within you, what T. S. Elliot calls ’the still point’. But the searcher and the seeker cannot find it because he never allows the still point to settle. He is always full of desires, longings, becomings, dreams and the future and projections, and he has no time to look herenow at what is the case; he is always on the go. That’s how the whole of humanity has become a great madhouse: searching for that which is already the case.

Will it be easy to pronounce? – ‘Deva Arpito’. Good. And that’s all I teach here – tao. I don’t teach anything of the future but only of the present, because the present contains all the past and all the future. This moment contains the whole past and the whole future. I teach you to relax. Relax in this moment, and all will be taken care of.

Deva means divine, geha means home – divine home. And this is your home-coming. This is the place you have been searching for your whole life.

It is a culmination of a great search, a great longing. And if one really longs it is always fulfilled. Existence is very generous. It never frustrates, never, never. If we are frustrated that simply means that our longing was very lukewarm; it was not worth much. We had not really longed for it; it was not passionate, it was not hot. If there was passion, intensity, then each and every longing would have been fulfilled.

So this is your home.… And another meaning of your name is: become a home for god, become a host. We cannot search for god because we don’t know where he is, we don’t know who he is; we don’t know his address at all so search is not possible. But we can wait... waiting is possible. That’s what real prayer is; waiting. And if one waits really, totally, intensely, it happens: god descends. You need not go anywhere – god will come to you. Just a passionate waiting is needed... with trust, with love. Even if one has to wait for eternity one is ready to wait. And if one is ready to wait for eternity it can happen even in the very instant, because time is not the question. If our desire is total then this very moment it can happen.

All that is needed is a one hundred degree desire so that we can evaporate. In that heat the ego disappears and the absence of the ego immediately becomes the presence of god.

[A sannyasin who is going to the West says: I don’t know whether I really have to do it or not – to see the people there and my familyIt’s very difficult because I’m so happy here, but something

calls me there sometimes.]

You are just escaping – there is no need to go! Those are just tricks of the mind.and the mind

plays many tricks. And particularly when you start coming to something deeper, the mind becomes afraid that now if you go a little deeper it will not have any meaning in your life any more. The mind has possessed you for so long, it has been the master, and nobody wants to lose the mastery. And that’s where you are: just a little more, a little more blissfulness, and the mind will not have any more sway over you. Hence the mind will try in every way to give you ideas: ‘Do this, go there’ and it will rationalise that you have this duty and this responsibility.

But I don’t feel that there is any need. And if sometime there is a need to go, I will tell you; just leave it to me. Be here – there is no need to go.

[A sannyasin had previously written to Osho about wanting to surrender.]

Everything is perfectly good. It is just that you become puzzled – not because something is being missed by you but only because you want to surrender so much that whatsoever you do looks not enough that’s all; otherwise you are doing perfectly well. And that happens to people who want to surrender more and more; that is natural. So whatsoever surrender they do, it still feels as if some thing more can be done. But you are going perfectly well; there is no problem at all.

Surrender will grow on its own – it cannot be forced. It is going so well and there is no hindrance either, but everything takes its own time and one has to be patient. Surrender is like a Cedar tree: it grows slowly slowly – it is not a seasonal flower. And the seasonal surrender is not of any value; one day it is there, another day it is gone. If the tree has to rise high into the heaven then it has to send its roots deep into the earth – it takes time. And the roots are growing.

First the roots have to reach to the depth, and then only can the tree grow upwards; otherwise who will support it? So many times it happens when you see the growth of the tree you may not understand what is happening because the real growth is happening underground, in the dark womb of the soil. The tree may not be very big on the surface, but it is getting ready to be big any dayso

don’t be worried about it!

[A sannyasins says: There is something with my energy – there is no sex.]

When there is no desire don’t go into it, don’t force, mm? That will be very violent to your whole being – it will disturb your whole being. When celibacy comes naturally, celebrate it! Natural celibacy is the really beautiful thing. And there is something like that happening. It is good!

Celibacy has its own passion, its own joy: it is the beauty of being alone. And it is good that the desire for the other is disappearing.

Everybody has to come to it: then only is the bondage with the other dropped. And I am not saying that you have to force celibacy. When it comes on its own it is beautiful – when it is forced, it is ugly. If sometimes you again start feeling a desire for sex, go into it joyfully – don’t feel guilty; it may come once in a while. But by and by it will come less and less, and one day it simply disappears. And the day it disappears completely is the greatest day in life.

So no need to be worried about it.…

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